Let me start by expressing how much I love Amiibo. Nintendo’s
series of pseudo-toys-to-life has captured my heart and bound it in a prison of
poverty and preorder anxiety. The small figures are perfect collectibles and
easy to display on a shelf, but each one still sports incredible detail. I have
over a hundred of these things, and I will most likely keep buying them as long
as Nintendo sells them.

I didn’t always love the colorful figures though. When they were
first announced I was incredibly skeptical, even as a Skylanders fan. “What good are these figures if they just unlock a
CPU character in Smash Bros.?” I pondered,
still in an innocent state free of the collector’s mindset. I bought a Samus
figure for posterity, and never touched the toys again.

…that is, until their popularity reached absurd levels.
Suddenly, out-of-print figures were worth 50 to 60 dollars. Lines for preorders
were around the block. Clearly, I had to be missing some appeal to these things
if so many people were enamored with them. My curiosity for the toys was piqued
in a way that it wasn’t before. I bought a couple more, and then some more
after that. Before I knew it, my collection had grown into the behemoth that it
is today:

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One thing that remains disappointing to me is the character
poses for the Smash series. Instead of choosing a pose for each character that
could best be conveyed in figure form, the Amiibo designers (if such a job
title exists) were railroaded into recreating the official poses from Smash 4.
This restriction bothered me quite a bit and led to some figures appearing much
lower quality than they should have (looking at you, Link).

The upcoming Smash
Ultimate has a chance to remedy that. Sure, we are getting Amiibo for
Ridley, the Inkling (again, for some reason), and probably the new “echo fighters”.
What I want are fresh poses for every fighter in the roster. There is an opportunity
to unleash the untapped creativity in the Smash
Amiibo series, with fan apprehension and manufacturing feasibility being the
only hurdles to clear. Admittedly, those are very large hurdles, but a man can
dream. Make it happen Nintendo. Ignore the majority of your fans and all forms
of common sense. Give me more of those sweet, sweet Smash Amiibo.